Still Life With Crows (34 page)

Snip.

The whole belly flopped open, and a collection of things came tumbling out, spilling across the ground. A foul stink rose up. Corrie gasped and backed away, holding her hand over her mouth. It took her a moment to take in what it was that had slid steaming into the dirt: a crazy-quilt assortment of leaves, twigs, slugs, salamanders, frogs, mice, stones. And there, among the offal, a slimy circlet that appeared to be a dog’s collar. A wounded but still living snake uncoiled from the mass and sidewinded painfully into the grass.

“Son of a
bitch,
” said Hazen, backing up, his face slack with disgust.

“Sheriff?”

“What?”

“There’s your tail.”

Pendergast was pointing at something protruding from the mess.

“Tail? What are you talking about?”

“The tail ripped from the dog.”

“Oh,
that
tail. We’ll be sure to bag and analyze that one.” Hazen had recovered quickly and Corrie caught him winking at the M.E.

“And the dog collar.”

“Yup,” Hazen said.

“May I point out,” Pendergast continued, “that it appears the abdomen was cut open with the same crude implement previously used for the Swegg amputations, the cutting off of the dog’s tail, and the scalping of Gasparilla.”

“Right, right,” said the sheriff, not listening.

“And if I am not mistaken,” Pendergast said, “there is the crude implement itself. Broken and tossed aside.” He indicated something in the dirt to one side.

The sheriff glanced over, frowned, and nodded to the SOC man, who photographed it in situ, then picked the two pieces up with rubber tweezers and put them in evidence bags. It was a flint Indian knife, lashed to a wooden handle.

“From here I’d say it was a Southern Cheyenne protohistoric knife, hafted with rawhide to a willow-wood handle. Genuine, I might add, and in perfect condition until it was broken by clumsy use. A find of particular importance.”

Hazen grinned. “Yeah, important. As another prop in this whole bullshit drama.”

“I beg your pardon?”

There was a rustle behind them, and Corrie turned. A pair of glossy-booted state troopers were pushing their way out of the corn and into the clearing. One was carrying a fax. The sheriff turned toward the newcomers with a big smile. “Ah. Just what I’ve been waiting for.” He held out his hand, snatched the fax, and glanced at it, his smile broadening. Then he handed it to Pendergast.

“It’s a cease-and-desist, Pendergast, straight from the FBI’s Midwestern Divisional Office. You’re off the case.”

“Indeed?” Pendergast read the document carefully. Then he looked up. “May I keep this, Sheriff?”

“By all means,” Hazen said. “Keep it, frame it, hang it in your den.” All of a sudden, his voice grew less affable. “And now, Mr. Pendergast, with all due respect, this is a crime scene and unauthorized personnel are not allowed.” His red eyes swiveled toward Corrie. “That means you and your sidekick.”

Corrie stared back at him.

Pendergast folded the sheet carefully and slipped it into his suit coat. He turned to Corrie. “Shall we?”

She stared at him in outrage. “Agent Pendergast,” she began, “you aren’t just going to let him get away with that—?”

“Now is not the time, Corrie,” he said softly.

“But you just
can’t
—!”

Pendergast took her arm and steered her gently but firmly away, and before she could recover they were out of the corn and on the narrow dirt service road beside her Gremlin. Wordlessly, she slid behind the wheel, Pendergast settling in beside her as she started up the engine. She was almost blind with rage as she maneuvered through the thicket of parked official vehicles. Pendergast had let the sheriff walk all over him, insult her—and he’d done nothing. She felt like crying.

“Miss Swanson, I must say the tapwater in Medicine Creek is exceptionally good. As you know, I am a drinker of green tea, and I don’t believe I’ve ever found better water for making the perfect cup.”

There was no answer she could make to this non sequitur. She merely braked the Gremlin at the paved road and stared at him. “Where are we going?”

“You are going to drop me at the Kraus place. And then I’d suggest you return to your trailer and seal all the windows. I understand that a dust storm is coming.”

Corrie snorted. “I’ve seen dust storms before.”

“Not one of this magnitude. Dust storms can be among the most frightful of meteorological events. In Central Asia, they are so severe the natives have given names to the winds that bear them. Even here, during the dust bowl, they were known as ‘black blizzards.’ People caught outside were known to suffocate.”

Corrie accelerated onto the paved road with a screech of rubber. The whole scene had begun to take on a sense of unreality. Here Pendergast had just been humiliated, ordered peremptorily off a case he’d come all the way from New York to investigate . . . and all he could do was talk about tea and the weather?

A minute ticked away, then two. At last, she couldn’t take the silence any longer. “Look,” she blurted indignantly, “I can’t believe you just let that sack-of-shit sheriff
do
that to you!”

“Do what?”

“What? Treat you that way! Kick you off the site!”

Pendergast smiled. “
Nisi paret imperat.
‘If he does not obey, he commands.’ ”

“You mean you’re not going to obey the order?”

“Miss Swanson, I do not habitually talk about my future intentions, even with a trusted assistant.”

She blushed despite her anger. “So we’re just going to blow him off? Continue our investigation? To hell with the runty bastard?”

“What I do with regard to, as you so colorfully put it, ‘the runty bastard’ can no longer be your concern. The important thing is, I cannot have you defying the sheriff on my account. Ah, here we are. Pull up to the garages behind the house, if you please.”

Corrie pulled behind the Kraus mansion, where a rickety row of old wooden garages stood. Pendergast went to one that sported a fresh padlock and chain, unlocked it, and flung open the doors. Inside Corrie could see the gleam of a car—a big car. Pendergast disappeared into the gloom and she soon heard the roar of an engine, followed by a low purring. Slowly, the car nosed out of the garage. Corrie could hardly believe her eyes as a gleaming, polished vision of elegance emerged into the gray dust of Medicine Creek. She had never seen a car like it before, except maybe in the movies. It came to an idling stop and Pendergast got out.

“Where’d this come from?”

“I always knew there was a chance I might lose your services, and so I had my own car brought out.”

“This is
yours?
What is it?”

“A ’59 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith.”

It was only then that the full meaning of his prior sentence sunk in. “What do you mean, lose my services?”

Pendergast handed her an envelope. “Inside is your pay up to the end of the week.”

“What’s this for? Aren’t I going to stay on as your assistant?”

“Not after the cease-and-desist. I can’t protect you from it, and I could not ask you to put yourself in legal jeopardy. Regrettably, as of this moment, you are discharged. I would suggest you go home and resume your normal life.”

“What normal life? My normal life
sucks.
There must be
something
I can do!” She felt a rising tide of fury and helplessness: now that she was finally interested in the case, fascinated even; now that she felt she had finally met a person she could respect and trust—now that she finally had a reason to wake up in the morning—he was firing her. Despite her best efforts, she felt a tear escape. She angrily wiped it away.

Pendergast bowed. “You could help me one last time by satisfying my curiosity on the source of Medicine Creek’s excellent water.”

She stared in disbelief. He really was impossible.

“It comes from wells that supposedly tap into some underground river,” she said, trying to make her voice as stony as possible.

“Underground river,” Pendergast repeated, his eyes blank, as if his gaze had turned inward with a sudden revelation. He smiled, bowed, took her hand, raised it to within an inch of his lips. And then he got into his car and glided off, leaving her standing in the parking lot beside her own junk heap, in a swirl of dust, consumed by a mixture of wrath, astonishment, and misery.

Forty-Two

T
he cruiser whipped past the rows of corn on the airline road at a nice, easy 110 miles per hour. The AC might not work, thought Hazen, and the upholstery might look like shit, but the 5.0 Mustang police package still had what it took under the hood. The heavy chassis rocked from side to side, and in the rearview mirror Hazen could see two rows of corn whipsawing in his wake.

Hazen felt better than he had all week. Pendergast was out of the picture. He had a firm handle on the case, and it was getting firmer all the time. He glanced over at Chester Raskovich, sitting next to him. The security honcho looked a little gray around the gills, and beads of sweat had popped out on his temple. The speed of the cruiser didn’t seem to agree with him. Hazen had much rather it had been Tad sitting in the passenger seat than this campus grunt; the confrontation that was about to take place would have been good experience for him. For the thousandth time, Hazen found himself wishing that his own boy Brad had grown up more like his deputy: respectful, ambitious, less of a wise-ass. Hazen sighed. Wishful thinking wasn’t important right now. What
was
important was keeping Raskovich in the loop, and by extension, Dr. Fisk. If he played this right, he was certain Medicine Creek would get the experimental field.

The first outlying farmhouses of Deeper flashed past, and Hazen slowed quickly to the speed limit. It wouldn’t be too swift to flatten some Deeper kid just as the case was breaking and things were going his way.

“What’s the plan, Sheriff?” Raskovich managed to say. He had begun to breathe again.

“We’re going to pay a visit to Mr. Norris Lavender, Esquire.”

“Who’s that?”

“He owns half of the town plus a lot of these fields out here. Leases ’em out. His family owned the first ranch in these parts.”

“You think he’s involved?”

“Lavender’s got his finger in every pie around here. Like I asked Hank Larssen: who’s got the most to lose? Well, no mystery there.”

Raskovich nodded.

Now the commercial district of Deeper hove into view. There was a Hardee’s at one end of town and an A&W at the other; in between, a bunch of shabby or shuttered storefronts; a sporting goods store; a grocery; a gas station; a used car lot (all AMC shitboxes); a coin-op laundromat; and the Deeper Sleep Motel. Everything dated from the fifties.
Could be a movie set,
thought Hazen.

He turned into the parking lot behind the Grand Theater (long abandoned) and the Hair Apparent salon. In the rear sat a low, one-story building of orange brick, completely surrounded by a shimmering expanse of heaved asphalt. Hazen drove to the glass-doored entrance and parked his car across the fire lane, illegally, in your face. Hank’s cruiser was parked neatly nearby. Hazen shook his head. Hank just didn’t know how to do things in a way that commanded respect. He left the cruiser with its pinball flasher going like mad, so everyone would know he was there on official business.

Hazen pushed through the double doors and strode into the chilly air of the Lavender Building, Raskovich at his heels. He glanced around the reception area. A rather ugly secretary, with a voice of such efficiency that it bordered on unfriendliness, said, “You may go straight through, Sheriff. They’ve been waiting.”

He touched the brim of his hat and strode down the hall, right, and through some more glass doors. Another secretary, even dumpier than the first, waved them past.

They grow ’em ugly up here in Deeper,
he thought.
Probably marry their cousins.

Hazen paused at the threshold of the rear office and looked around with narrowed eye. It was pretty snazzy, with a slick cosmopolitan look: bits of metal and glass in various shades of gray and black, oversized desk, thick carpeting, potted figs. A couple of cheesy Darlin’ Dolls prints, however, betrayed Lavender’s white trash origins. Lavender himself sat, smiling, behind the giant desk, and when Hazen’s eye fell on him the man rose easily to his feet. He was wearing a jogging suit with racing stripes, and a diamond ring in a platinum setting winked on one pinky. He was slender and rather tall, and he invested all his movements with what he no doubt assumed looked like aristocratic languor. His head, however, was overly large for his body and shaped like a pyramid, a very wide mouth smiling under two gimlet eyes set close together, tapering to a narrow forehead as smooth and white as a slab of sliced suet. It was the head of a fat man on a thin body.

Sheriff Larssen, who’d been sitting in a chair to one side, rose also.

Lavender said nothing, merely extending an arm with a very small white hand at the end of it, indicating a seat. It was a challenge: would Hazen obey, or choose a seat himself?

Hazen smiled, guided Raskovich into the seat, and then took his own.

Lavender remained standing. He placed his childlike hands on the desk and leaned forward slowly, still smiling.

“Welcome to Deeper, Sheriff Hazen. And this is, I believe, Mr. Raskovich of Kansas State University?” His voice was smooth, unctuous.

Hazen nodded quickly. “I figure you know why I’m here, Norris.”

“Do I need to call my lawyer?” Lavender made it sound like a joke.

“That’s up to you. You’re not a suspect.”

Lavender raised his eyebrows. “Indeed?”

Indeed. And here his grandfather was a damn bootlegger.

“Indeed,” Hazen repeated.

“Well then, Sheriff. Shall we proceed? Seeing as how this is a voluntary interview, I reserve the right to end questioning at any moment.”

“Then I’ll get to the point. Who owns the Deeper land chosen as a possible site for KSU’s experimental field?”